Two Kinston stars reflect on pivotal Super Bowl

Lin Dawson, member of the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl XX team, poses by his framed jersey at the Kinston/Lenoir County Sports Hall of Fame inside the Woodmen Community Center on Friday.

Zach Frailey / The Free Press

By Wes Wolfe / Staff Writer

Published: Saturday, February 2, 2013 at 06:55 PM.

One shot. One chance. That’s all you get.

If you’re lucky.

Being a football player and making a team in the National Football League is accomplishment enough. Being a member of a group of players who reach the Super Bowl is rarer still. Dan Marino, one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game, made it to and lost the Super Bowl in his second pro season. Surely, he’d be there again.

He wasn’t.

Two Kinston High School graduates were good enough and lucky enough to make it to Super Bowl XX, both playing for the New England Patriots. The game was a high-point of their careers, and for the 1980s Patriots. It was also about much more than what happened between the goal lines of the Louisiana Superdome on Jan. 26, 1986.

The Patriots drafted tight end Lin Dawson out of N.C. State with the 212nd pick of the 1981 NFL Draft. They took offensive guard Ron Wooten out of UNC two rounds earlier, at No. 157. By the 1985 season, they were seasoned veterans in the prime of their careers.

To get to New Orleans that year, the Pats had to do it the hard way. They got in the playoffs as a wild card team and had to go on the road to beat the New York Jets, the Los Angeles Raiders and then the Miami Dolphins in the AFC Championship Game.

Being a football player and making a team in the National Football League is accomplishment enough. Being a member of a group of players who reach the Super Bowl is rarer still. Dan Marino, one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game, made it to and lost the Super Bowl in his second pro season. Surely, he’d be there again.

He wasn’t.

Two Kinston High School graduates were good enough and lucky enough to make it to Super Bowl XX, both playing for the New England Patriots. The game was a high-point of their careers, and for the 1980s Patriots. It was also about much more than what happened between the goal lines of the Louisiana Superdome on Jan. 26, 1986.

The Patriots drafted tight end Lin Dawson out of N.C. State with the 212nd pick of the 1981 NFL Draft. They took offensive guard Ron Wooten out of UNC two rounds earlier, at No. 157. By the 1985 season, they were seasoned veterans in the prime of their careers.

To get to New Orleans that year, the Pats had to do it the hard way. They got in the playoffs as a wild card team and had to go on the road to beat the New York Jets, the Los Angeles Raiders and then the Miami Dolphins in the AFC Championship Game.

The hype

After the last win, the rhythm and routine that served the team well was interrupted. How players and organizations respond to the build-up to the Super Bowl can impact what happens on the field.

“There are more distractions, many more requests for interviews,” Wooten said. “You’re in a town with tons of fans, and family traveling, and they expect and deserve more of your time, so there are more distractions than usual. But, with the professionalism of the coaching staff and players, I don’t think many teams get lost in that hype and take their eye of the ball.”

But if it’s the first time in the big game for a particular set of coaches and players, adjustments have to be made on the fly.

“Of course, it’s a euphoric time, because most of the world is watching,” Dawson said. “You get phone calls from not only your relatives, but people you haven’t talked to for years that find a way to contact you through the football organization. You find out very quickly that the marketing giants of the NFL kind of take over. And, for eight or nine days, you kind of lose sight of the fact that it is another football game.”

Dawson reflected that part of the problem was dealing with logistical necessities — training, practicing and sleeping in strange places. Bedouins in cleats and pads.

It can start to mess with a player’s focus.

“You start thinking about the Super Bowl versus the game, and there’s a difference,” Dawson said. “There’s a marked difference in thinking about a football game versus the Super Bowl.”

Wooten said the proliferation in sports media and player availability through social media brings an added pressure to athletes like this season’s Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers, but pressure and an amount of outsized ballyhoo have been part and parcel of what makes the Super Bowl.

“In Super Bowl XX when we played, every interested sports fan in the world watches it — it’s the most expensive advertising of the year, it has the best ratings,” Wooten said. “Certainly, we were playing in a Super Bowl that had a very unique team — the Bears — with a national following and a lot of hype. So, there was an extra-special amount of hype and coverage.”

The game

The New England offense depended heavily on the run and time of possession, making both players key.

“We were strictly a running team,” Wooten said. “We didn’t have a lot of skill, or at least production, in the passing game, and coming from behind was a very difficult thing to do. We were beating teams with aggressive special teams play, a defense that got turnovers and an offense that possessed the ball and ran it.”

Dawson caught 39 balls for 427 yards and four touchdowns in 1984, and though passing production was down, he was expected to be an integral part of disrupting the Chicago Bears defense. A defense, coached by defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan and running his signature “46” scheme, considered to be one of the all-time best in the NFL.

“That defense was what you call the ‘46’ defense — it’s different because they put a defensive back over the tight end and put a rushing linebacker on the outside,” Dawson said. “Our game plan was to use two tight ends to neutralize that 46 defense, which we believed was going to work.”

On the second play of the game, Bears running back Walter Payton fumbled at Chicago’s 19-yard line and the Patriots recovered. On New England’s first offensive play of the game, quarterback Tony Eason threw the ball to Dawson for what most accounts considered to be a would-be touchdown.

Dawson dropped the ball as his left patellar tendon ruptured.

He’d torn the tendon against the Jets and played most of the game. Dawson scored a touchdown against the Raiders before he had to come out of the contest, and even played significant minutes against the Dolphins until he had to head to the bench.

Dawson and the medical staff agreed the tendon could be repaired after the season was over. He said he regrets taking the painkiller injection and going into the game — once the tendon blew, “our game plan kind of went out the window at that point.”

After being tied at three points a piece, two scores off Patriots fumbles and two solid drives by the Bears put Chicago up 23-3 going into halftime. When New England didn’t turn the ball over, the team couldn’t complete enough passes with Eason or Steve Grogan, while the Bears bottled up running back Craig James.

The Patriots gained yards on only four of 21 plays in the first half, putting up minus-19 yards of offense. Once Chicago went 96 yards on the second possession of the second half to go up 30-3, the Pats went into a state of high anxiety.

Wooten said that element of a team’s psyche is what makes pro football different than baseball or basketball, which closes the season with a best-of-seven series.

“In football, it’s one game, and things start going badly against you, you almost have a sense of desperation setting in,” Wooten said. “And I would call it panic. Where, ‘Look, this is getting away from us.’ Unfortunately, we know that if you react with panic to any situation, you’re not going to be happy with the outcome. I think that happened to a lot of AFC teams down in that period of time — certainly the Patriots. We were ill-equipped to come from behind against teams.”

Indeed, the 46-10 shellacking New England got was not unusual during the NFC’s 13-0 run from Super Bowl XIX to Super Bowl XXXI. AFC teams lost by an average of nearly three touchdowns — only the four-point win by the 49ers over the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII and one-point classic victory by the New York Giants over the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV stand as outliers.

Scandal

In the days immediately following the Super Bowl, the Boston Globe ran a series of stories by sportswriter Ron Borges detailing a pattern of drug use among Patriots players, especially cocaine use. Wooten admitted that 90 percent of what went on that season never made it into the media. But, what did turned that offseason into his “worst nightmare.”

Wooten said he and other players were aware some of their teammates had serious problems and it was harming their performance. Dawson said he didn’t believe the allegations of cocaine abuse. But both credit head coach Raymond Berry with holding the team together when distrust between players and New England’s management and ownership was at its highest.

“We dealt with it mainly because of the leadership of our coach,” Wooten said. “Raymond Berry recognized the problems with recreational drug abuse. Marijuana, cocaine, other things were a distraction. And alcohol, to be honest with you. He took it upon himself to get programs and counseling for players that they had identified had this problem before it all came out.

“So, he was trying to deal with it proactively, because there was recognition that it was a problem. His sincere love and respect for these individuals and his desire to help them — it was more of that, combined with their focus as athletes.”

Dawson looked at an offseason and full regular season that he would need to rehab his knee instead of be on the field. And going into the 1986 campaign, a fortunate break was hard to find.

“After (the stories broke), there was a lack of trust on our team. It got pretty bad,” Dawson said. “There were guys who wanted to be traded, and we came back the next year. Raymond Berry, being the leader he is, pulled us back together. Then we had four of our defensive starters go down in preseason. … I know we lost four players for the season, and things kind of went into the tubes.”

Redemption

Out of adversity emerged a division champion. New England went 11-5 and won the AFC East. Dawson was able to get himself healthy without being rushed back on the field. What got the Patriots through the ’85 playoffs came back into effect.

“When you’re a guy like me, where at any organization I’m with, that becomes an important part of my life,” Wooten said. “We had a lot of players like that who acted the same way — ‘This is our team, we have a lot of respect for our coaches and the owners, we don’t need to cash this in and not stay together and achieve.’ We were able to do that.”

Dawson said the bond between the players of those seasons still lasts.

“The issue is going from a high to an ultimate low. There’s no real reward for losing the Super Bowl. And, you become close to those players,” Dawson said. “By the way, when we got together for our 20th reunion, Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots — he’s won, what, three Super Bowls and been to six — said that our team, our group of guys from ‘85-’86, were still the closest of any team that he’s had. It really impacted us.”

Looking back, looking ahead

Tonight, Ravens linebacker and future member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Ray Lewis will play his last game. Wooten was on the same line Hall of Fame offensive guard John Hannah, who closed out his career in Super Bowl XX.

“There was nobody more focused on winning than John,” said Wooten, who like Dawson was an inaugural selection for the Kinston/Lenoir County Sports Hall of Fame in 2004. “That, sort of, was infused in players who were still there and left behind. What I expect Ray Lewis will leave for the Ravens will carry through for several years. His intensity and focus and commitment will carry forward. That’s how John’s impact carried forward.”

And for some of the players in Super Bowl XLVII who never make it back, what’s special just might be who are in the stands to see them.

“The great thing was — Coach Coley Little was my mentor,” Dawson said of the 2012 Kinston/Lenoir County Sports Hall of Fame inductee and legendary Kinston youth coach. “He’s been my mentor for as long as I can remember. And being able to bring him to the Super Bowl. That was a joy to me. Those little things like that — being able to bring him to watch me play in the biggest game of the world. It wasn’t a reward, but it was a small token. That, to me, was something.

“Second, just seeing all the families together for the first time. Seeing grandmothers, and people who would never come to a regular game. My mother was able to come to New Orleans and see me play in the Super Bowl. Those were great, great stories.”

Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at WolfeReports.